Nixon, Ford, and Watergate

This is the home page for the Nixon, Ford, and Watergate investigative project, one of several grassroots investigations being hosted on the History Commons website. The data published as part of this investigation has been collected, organized, and published by members of the public who are registered users of this website.

Timeline entries sorted by the month they were published

What's New?

10/5/2008 Complete but Incomplete...

For the moment, we have completed our work on the Watergate timeline (with the exception of an entry or two on the death of President Nixon, which will be forthcoming). But much remains unsaid. There are many books and articles covering aspects of Watergate that were not covered: Bernstein’s and Woodward’s The Final Days is one, as is Anthony Summers’…

6/25/2008 Project Continues to Expand

Over thirty years later, information continues to be revealed and compiled about the plethora of crimes and excesses lumped together under the “Watergate” rubric. We continue to document them. You are invited to join in furthering our understanding of this seminal period in US political and social development.

3/5/2008 Watergate Project Live

We’ve taken the Watergate Project live. Right now there are only a few entries available, but that number will increase significantly in the very near future. We intend to produce one of the most comprehensive Watergate timelines available on the Web. You are invited to join the History Commons and take part in this and other projects.

1/23/2008 New Entries Forthcoming

A number of new entries are in the pipeline for this project. Believe it or not, this project is fairly well along. In the weeks ahead, as entries go “live,” this project will span the entirety of Watergate from the day Nixon was first elected to 2005 and the reflections of some of the key participants and observers. We invite you to join the Commons and …

1/22/2008 New Project

The Watergate Project is one of the latest to be undertaken by the people of the History Commons. It’s a long time coming…. We’d love your help. Just click here to find out how you can become part of the Commons.

The array of actions and events lumped together under the rubric of “Watergate” has had a profound and lasting impact on the American body politic. Its ramifications include the destruction of the moderate/liberal wing of the Republican Party, the lasting disarray of the Democratic Party (never able to settle on its responses to the Watergate scandal and to codify its own supposed stance as a party of principled opposition to corporate and campaign greed and malfeasance), and the revitalized careers of such conservative stalwarts as Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney. Watergate has been documented, analyzed, discussed, and picked apart for decades. This project attempts to bring together the many disparate sources that have documented the Nixon and Ford administrations, and the scandal that came to define both presidents, in one comprehensive timeline of events. It is our hope that as we add to this project over the coming months, our understanding of the events of that time, and of their impact on current political and social trends, will increase. You can help make this happen by volunteering. Just click here to find out more.

The Web site Watergate.info was extremely helpful in organizing this project. The site’s proprietor, Malcolm Farnsworth, does for Watergate what we try to do with a number of sets of issues and events. His is yet another example of how valuable citizen research can be.